


since I am not a bird

by rosekay



Category: Samurai Champloo
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/pseuds/rosekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All his life, Jin has looked for control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	since I am not a bird

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tangerine

All his life, Jin has looked for control.

He has only dim memories of his mother. Warm, perfumed skin that always smelled more of her paints, the crush of her silks in his hand, a faint impression of her smile veiled by the sleek, dark hair that he'd inherited.

He might have had a little sister, round cheeks and soft hands, but his father died early, leaving him in the care of a distant uncle.

"You will make the Takedas proud, Jin," Mariya Enshirou said when he came to his dojo.

But Jin has never cared too much for family honor, more interested in the clean brightness of the blade. There, he found no room for softness or wavering, the quick passing fragrance of women, or the empty assurances of dead men.

He knows personal honor, not the glory of fame or blood, but the cool satisfaction of perfection.

He knows loyalty, to his sensei and the dojo, and courtesy, even if the younger students all called him cold behind his back.

It's sad that he was the named for the virtue he's not sure he has.

Jin has rarely found the need for people, not for their own sake. He owed certain allegiances, to his master and the younger students, never to the shogunate whose workings he'd rarely understood or to the lords who still tried for their loyalty.

He's learned to appreciate beauty, the startling clarity of water at midday, the clean lines that nature sometimes provided on her own, and then the ones he could create with a katana.

His master moved with an economy of motion that Jin always envied, only more so the closer he got.

"You need control, Jin."

He thought of the perfumes and silks that had floated away, the name of his father still bright in his head, the small time he'd spent alone in the house before they had brought him to the dojo, head pressed against the screens, listening to the muted thunder of worry and apprehension.

He was young then, gawky, too tall for real grace, and frustrated when his body wouldn't give him the last length he needed.

He dutifully read poetry, philosophy, virtues, ate the food that he was given, but he took no joy in them, because they were easily understood, easily balanced.

It was the sword that gave him challenge, that made him think through every move until his head ached, because instinct refused to serve him. He bent the blade to become part of him, but he knew he could never lose sight of it.

He learned to see, but only the flash of the blade itself, never the spaces between.

He learned to be elegant, but only the sketches of its dance, not the thing itself.

He learned to be content, but inside he always burned to know more.

He found passion only for his art, the thought of ice then far from his head, a more youthful surge rushing through his words.

Jin has relied on instinct only a few times in his life. They have mostly ended in blood. He remembers being young, afraid, almost deaf to his master's last agonized approval from the pounding of his own heart.

On the road, with a title he never wanted, he was forced to know the things he'd never cared for, how to speak to people, how to measure out the grains of rice, wash them of their dust, and set them to boil, how his swords were only metal.

Patiently, he waited for his death to come. Mariya had killed a thousand men and won a dojo; Jin killed one, and won an invitation for his blood.

He grew bored.

No real challengers, only empty anger that had no use to him, a shameful lack of grace, defenses that he punctured like half woven skeins of thread.

Mugen is a surprise.

"That hair's fucking impractical, man."

Coarseness of language has never particularly bothered Jin before, but it bothers him now.

Mugen's is cut ragged, floating about his head like a demented flower. He doesn't know how to contain himself, sullen most of the time, and every other height of passion flashing across his face as he feels them.

His geta seem to betray his every move, his feints and wild kicks displaying a near disgusting lack of foresight. Jin watches each wasted motion with narrowed eyes, but he has to bite a lip in surprise when he discovers that he can't track the idiot's next hit.

He thinks he's found it - his death, or at least another source of pride.

Mugen's rarely bound by the earth - he flies above them, limbs exploding, his blade in plain sight but never predictable.

Jin has to try hard to keep up - he's not used to someone who apparently hasn't even tried to learn the rules.

Even that twirling sword doesn't seem quite Japanese, no brand or master's name upon it.

Later, Mugen will them about how he stole it from explorers from across the sea, west of China, with exotic silks and too much hair, dark skin that glowed. An alien tongue, he'll say, and so many blades, even bigger than his, wickedly curved, and gaudy.

It curves like a katana, but the hilt frames the hand like a farmer's pitchfork. Jin knows a thousand masters who would have called it a shame, though he can't deny how effective it is.

At first, Fuu pulls them apart from a more satisfying fight, but it's Mugen that eventually closes the distance.

"Skin's too white," he says, a dirty hand on Jin's arm, squeezing, lewd because most everything that Mugen does is lewd. "Shit, and too skinny."

Jin raises an eyebrow, tilts his eyes at where Fuu is furiously counting through their change. Mugen's eyes narrow in suspicion as he watches her fingers skate over the money. Jin never really appreciated the simple, greedy pleasure of quick cash until he met the two of them.

"The little brat? Boobs too small. Boring."

Mugen folds his arms, satisfied.

"I don't have breasts," Jin points out calmly. He was thinking about sharpening his blade.

Mugens hands close around his shoulders, his wide boned face, fresh scrubbed and red from the stream, suddenly thrust into Jin's.

"Fuck, are you that stupid, samurai?"

Then one of his hand's drifts from Jin's shoulder, lower to the knot of heat below his clothes. Jin jerks a little at the suddenness - never the courtesy of a warning from Mugen - then just looks up coolly. Fuu's still obliviously sorting through their supplies, but the sky's starting to flush a rich, darkening haze. They really should start going.

He stands up, nearly knocking Mugen back, a collection of tumbling limbs.

"We need to find a place for the night."

He's looking at Fuu by the time Mugen starts cursing, so he only sees her eyes round in shock and a sort of clever surprise. She's not exactly what he expected either.

He's settling in for the night when Mugen comes again.

"I don't fucking beg, Jin."

Jin doesn't open his eyes, just lets his fist scatter open.

"We have the money - there are women in town."

"Don't want a fucking whore, Jin."

When he looks up, Mugen's framed against the dim lamplight from the other room, every feature thrown into sharp relief like a demon's, his hair even more ridiculous in the soft glow. He actually looks uncomfortable.

Jin traces the edge of scar around his collarbone, another one winding about one skinny, windmill arm, imagines the tracery of them beneath the outlandish clothes.

Mugen's special skill for avoiding death approaches the level of a savant. Jin's always surprised when he manages to spring back from wounds that would destroy other men, and even more so when he realizes he's glad to be so surprised.

His master might have said that the idiot as slated for a higher purpose, preserved for something greater.

Jin is not a religious man.

When Mugen moves close, his hands icy cold, he doesn't resist.

He mouths the curiously delicate shell of one ear, tugging at the dirty, blue earring until Mugen hisses like a cat against him, hands tightening into a bruising grip around Jin's wrist, his thigh.

He knows Mugen grew up on the prison island, and he can see the blackened teeth of not enough food as a child, the strange hollowness of the bone beneath his hands, but Mugen's nothing if not strong, tanned and wiry, the scars there for Jin to see just as he expected.

He licks the blue tattoos - at the bony wrists, the right one broken one too many times, and the oddly thick ankles, tough from traveling - he does it almost more gently than he would for a woman, and that's what breaks Mugen a little.

Jin can view this as a battle of sorts too - they're moving much more slowly, but at least he, with no less calculation. He can see how Mugen's no more guarded here, still all passion, pure instinct, hardly a thought for each rough move that scrapes Jin's skin or the tender inside of his mouth. He writhes like an animal, but Jin has seen him learn a difficult technique within days.

He moves his hands over each winding scar until Mugen's bucking into his touch, yanks at the hardness rising up between wiry thighs, runs a finger carefully over the weeping head, slicking the length of it with its own wetness.

"Fuck," Mugen breathes harshly. "Fuck, you little homo. How'd you get so good at this?"

Jin has rarely tried something he didn't master.

Then Mugen's hands are painfully tight, brown on Jin's pale skin, even whiter prints rising around the skeletal grip, and there's a hot, sour spill over his hands, the thick smell dampening the air around.

Dangerously relaxed, Jin thinks that this could be the time to strike, were he an assassin, all this dirty skin laid before him in the dizzy lassitude that comes after pleasure.

Then Mugen's reaching between Jin's legs too, his mouth hanging open a little so Jin can see the winking slickness of his tongue. He watches the dark eyes widen at the dampness that's there, and the wicked smile that follows.

"Shit, you pervert, got off on watching me?"

Jin wouldn't quite call it that, but he's satisfied enough that he just rolls over to sleep, Mugen's shifting warmth beside him.

Fuu's flushed cheeks the next morning tell him that the walls were thin.

He and Mugen exchange a glance, and they silently agree not to bring it up.

She's flighty, though, and nervous, distracted even from her food.

Her hands fly like pale birds in front of her as she puts out the dishes, spiking a brief memory of his mother, most likely just a servant from when he was little.

The false cheer is familiar to them both, but he chooses not to push her, and she welcomes the space.

Jin remembers her girlish crush, and grows wired in spite of himself, Mugen stuffing his face obliviously beside them.

He doesn't push her either when she tells them that she found her samurai. There's a brittle quality to her smile that he recognizes, and he sees that, at last, her face has matured, round cheeks ripened with sadness, a measured steadiness to her eyes that had never been there before.

He worried, and Mugen too, he knows, when she'd gone missing.

She's come back a different creature, one who hugs with desperation born of loss instead of fear, who carries herself with more height than she has.

He can see this even with his side aching like fire, in this dim little cabin.

"Your hair's stupid," Mugen tells him, but he runs his fingers through its length more carefully than he's treated anything else, strands catching on the scars and calluses littering his hands.

Jin hasn't had time for vanities like combing, but Mugen plays with it until it begins to run like watered silk between his fingers.

It's a strange intimacy, something they'd never have done before, but this is only Jin's first near-death, that shock of terror as Kariya's blade went through him, and he'd never realized how it changes a person. He wonders what had happened before Mugen came to him that first time.

When one of Mugen's fingers brushes his throat, he turns his head, catches those narrow, dark eyes, one still swollen from his battle.

He's too tired to plan, to try to see the spaces between their awkward, scarred bodies, figure out the arc of each move.

Mugen has always moved like an animal, but now he grinds against an answering heat in Jin, skin catching on skin. He shakes when Mugen licks between the crease of hip and thigh, swallowing his cock hungrily, dangerous catch of teeth here and there to remind of him of what hasn't been tamed.

Jin holds on to the warmth even with his sore arm, careless when their violent embraces jostle his wound.

Mugen is tight around him one night, clawing at Jin's back with his blunt, smoke blackened nails until he finds red welts the next morning. Before the old man brings their meal, he moves his tongue slickly in Jin, spindly hands holding his aching thighs apart, until Jin has to cry out, every muscle loosening, the old calculations spun from his mind.

He spills hot all over his belly, looking down at Mugen's wide, wicked slash of a grin.

They watch the shifting wine-slick surface of the sea, nearly the death of both of them, and Fuu, who had, this time, accepted their intent to fight.

All his life, Jin has looked for control.

He never quite grasped it, but he finds he doesn't care.


End file.
